Interpret the Scientific Method and Pseudoscience

ARTICLE

Identifying Pseudoscience: A Social Process Criterion

Gregory W. Dawes1

Published online: 6 January 2018 � Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract Many philosophers have come to believe there is no single criterion by which

one can distinguish between a science and a pseudoscience. But it need not follow that no

distinction can be made: a multifactorial account of what constitutes a pseudoscience

remains possible. On this view, knowledge-seeking activities fall on a spectrum, with the

clearly scientific at one end and the clearly non-scientific at the other. When proponents

claim a clearly non-scientific activity to be scientific, it can be described as a pseudo-

science. One feature of a scientific theory is that it forms part of a research tradition being

actively pursued by a scientific community. If a theory lacks this form of epistemic

warrant, this is a pro tanto reason to regard it as pseudoscientific.

Keywords Science � Pseudoscience � Research traditions � Scientific communities � Social epistemology � Velikovsky � Homeopathy � Germ-theory � Plate tectonics

1 Introduction

For much of the twentieth century, philosophers assumed that a clear distinction could be

made between science and pseudoscience, even if they disagreed about how to characterise

it. In recent decades, however, a weariness has crept into this discussion, coupled with a

sense that the task may be impossible. Already in 1983 Larry Laudan wrote about what he

called ‘‘the demise of the demarcation problem.’’ For whatever demarcation criteria are

proposed, he argued, there are either indisputably scientific theories that do not meet them,

or theories widely regarded as pseudoscientific that do. Laudan’s conclusion was that we

should ‘‘drop terms like ‘pseudo-science’ and ‘unscientific’ from our vocabulary; they are

just hollow phrases which do only emotive work for us’’ (Laudan 1983, 125). The only

distinction we need is that between reliable and unreliable sources of knowledge.

& Gregory W. Dawes [email protected]

1 Department of Philosophy, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand

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J Gen Philos Sci (2018) 49:283–298 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-017-9388-6

A recent book on the work of Immanuel Velikovsky (1895–1979), expresses a similarly

sceptical attitude. Its author, Michael Gordin, argues that the only feature characterising

the various practices described as pseudoscientific is that they are disliked by scientists. As

he writes,

we are faced with a variant of the classic story of three blind men encountering an

elephant. One holds the tail, and thinks it is a piece of string; another grabs a leg, and

thinks he is holding a tree; the third holds the trunk, and believes he grasps a snake.

Only, in the case of pseudoscience, they really are holding a piece of string, a tree

trunk, and a snake. There is no elephant. (Gordin 2012, 2)

His conclusion resembles Laudan’s, that ‘‘pseudoscience’’ is nothing more than ‘‘an empty

category, a term of abuse’’ (Gordin 2012, 206).

Despite such scepticism, the ‘‘science and pseudoscience’’ distinction refuses to die. Not

only do the labels continue to be used, but it is difficult to abandon the idea that they have

epistemic significance. Because the sciences seem to offer a reliable way of forming

beliefs, the distinction also has practical importance. Without such a distinction we would

find it difficult to make public policy decisions regarding some important matters (Mahner

2013, 35–36). These include the forms of healthcare that should receive public funding, the

subjects that should be taught in medical schools (MacLennan and Morrison 2012), the

kind of expert testimony that should be admitted in court (Hansson 2017, Sect. 1), and

whether intelligent design theory should be taught alongside evolution in public schools. A

particularly important field in which we need this distinction has to do with climate change.

Alongside the mainstream community of climate scientists, there is a small but vocal

community of sceptics, who produce evidence that at least appears to be scientific

(Oreskes and Conway 2010, 187). Should the work of climate-change sceptics be regarded

as science, or a politically motivated pseudoscience?

2 Science, Non-Science, Pseudoscience

Although we need to make such judgements, what the critics have shown is that doing so is

no simple matter. I accept Laudan’s claim that we will be unable to find a single

demarcation criterion, a ‘‘necessary and sufficient condition for something to count as

‘science’’’ (Laudan 1983, 123). Nor will we be able to find a set of criteria that jointly

constitute necessary and sufficient conditions for regarding an activity as scientific. But we

can still develop what I shall call a multifactorial account: one that lists factors to be taken

into account when making judgements about the scientific status of theories, without

claiming that any of these is decisive (Mahner 2007, 521–22). To return for a moment to

Gordin’s parable, it is true that each blind man is mistaken in believing the whole animal to

resemble the part with which he is in contact. But it does not follow that there is no

elephant.

2.1 Science and Non-Science

Underlying this view is a recognition that the term ‘‘science’’ does not pick out a clearly

defined set of activities. The term is better regarded as a ‘‘cluster-concept,’’ relating diverse

forms of knowledge-seeking activity and the theories to which they give rise. There are

two ways of thinking about cluster-concepts. The Wittgensteinian family-resemblance

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view holds that particular sciences are linked by ‘‘threads’’ made of features that are

common to two or more instances, although there may be no thread that links them all

(Pigliucci 2013, 21–22). My preferred understanding of science is a little different. It

begins with an established science (such as particle physics), whose status is uncontested,

lists its features, and then judges other activities to be scientific to the extent that they share

these features.1 But whatever conception of a cluster-concept one chooses, it will have

implications for our understanding of science.

In particular, it will make it impossible to make clear distinctions between science and

other forms of knowledge-seeking activity. The latter will also have some features char-

acteristic of science. This does not mean there are no differences, that all such activities

can be regarded as equivalent. On the contrary: there are differences, but they are dif-

ferences of degree rather than of kind. Take, for instance, the forms of scientific reasoning

that are discussed by philosophers: induction, deduction, and the assessment of evidence.

We all employ such reasoning in everyday life, as well as within particular fields of inquiry

such as journalism or law. So the use of such reasoning is not limited to the sciences. What

is characteristic of the sciences is that they employ such reasoning in a more systematic

and self-conscious fashion (Hoyningen-Huene 2013, 18).

This means that our knowledge-seeking activities can be thought of as forming a

spectrum. At one end will be the clearly non-scientific (such as journalism) and at the other

end will be practices that are undeniably scientific (such as particle physics). Moving along

the spectrum we will find practices such as historical writing, legal reasoning, ‘‘soft’’

sciences (such as sociology) and quasi- or proto-sciences (such as string theory).2 In

distributing activities in this way, philosophers have customarily paid attention to two

kinds of features: the evidential and the structural. The first of these has to do with the

reasoning that connects a theory with the relevant evidence. Our knowledge-seeking

activities may be more or less systematic in their attention to the evidence and to com-

peting explanations of it. The second refers to the fact that theories have certain internal

characteristics. They differ, for instance, in their degree of empirical content: the number

of possible states of affairs they exclude (Popper 2002, 96, 103). To these two kinds of

features, the present paper is adding a third, namely a social feature. This has to do with the

extent to which a theory has undergone the kind of collective scrutiny characteristic of

scientific communities.

2.2 Non-Science and Pseudoscience

What about pseudoscience? There is a difference between an activity that is merely non-

scientific and one that is pseudoscientific. As the ‘‘pseudo’’ in the term suggests, a pseu-

doscience is an activity that is being falsely presented as science, either explicitly or by

mimicking the forms of a science. This cannot be a sufficient condition for describing an

activity as a pseudoscience. If it were, instances of scientific fraud (such as fabricating

evidence) would be an indicator that the activity in question was pseudoscientific. This

1 For lists of such features, see, for example, the work of Mario Bunge (1991, 46) and Martin Mahner (2013, 38–39). (Bunge regards these features as jointly necessary, while Mahner favours a ‘‘family-resemblance’’ approach.) 2 My spectrum resembles Pigliucci’s (2013, 18), but differs from it insofar as it does not label activities at the non-scientific end of the spectrum ‘‘pseudoscience,’’ for such activities are pseudoscientific only when they mimic science (see Sect. 1.2).

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seems wrong: fraudulent practices can occur within fields that are indisputably sciences

(Hansson 2017, Sect. 3.3). But it can be a necessary condition.

To be falsely presented as a science, an activity must have two features. It must lack

some of the characteristics of a science, understood in the cluster-concept sense already

described. It is because it lacks such characteristics that it is being falsely presented as

science. But a pseudoscience must have another feature: it must appear to be a science, that

is to say, a systematic body of beliefs and practices. It may be less systematic than a true

science (Hoyningen-Huene 2013, 203–7), or systematic along fewer dimensions. But it

must present itself as a set of claims that are related to one another and to the practices

thought to ground them. The claimed relations may be of various kinds—purely logical or

more broadly evidential (Hoyningen-Huene 2013, 118–19)—and outsiders may question

their validity. But they must be thought to have epistemic significance. Without some

claimed relations of this kind, the activity in question would not even resemble a science.

For the rest of this paper I shall continue to speak about the scientific status of ‘‘the-

ories,’’ understanding that term to include any proposition or sets of propositions offered in

explanation of a class of phenomena. My reason for using this term is that it is often

theories whose scientific status we wish to assess. But it follows from what I have just been

arguing that theories will qualify as scientific (or pseudoscientific) only to the extent that

they form part of a system of beliefs and practice. The distinction between a science and a

pseudoscience will apply, in the first instance, to such systems. It will apply to particular

propositions only insofar as they play a role within the systems in question.

A pseudoscience, then, is a systematic form of knowledge-seeking activity that is being

falsely presented as a science. There are two categories of such knowledge-seeking

activity. The first is that of activities that are simply misguided, no matter how they are

undertaken. Astrology, for instance, seems to have no evidence in its favour. But not all

instances of such misguided activity will count as pseudoscientific. Take, for instance, a

person who casually reads the horoscopes in her local newspaper. Such a person should not

be thought of as practising a pseudoscience, since a casual reading of second-hand sources

does not even resemble a scientific inquiry. But if those who create the horoscopes present

astrology as a systematic body of doctrine based on evidence, then their activity could be

thought of as pseudoscientific.

Alongside non-scientific knowledge-seeking activities that are simply misguided, there

is a second class of activities that can be reliable, when conducted in an informal fashion.

But even these activities may count as pseudoscientific when they claim the degree of

precision and systematicity characteristic of a science. One can, for instance, undertake an

informal (descriptive or historical) study of fashion. But when Roland Barthes (1967) tried

to turn this into a science—a système de la mode—on the assumption that the elements of

clothing are related in the same way as the elements of a language, one could at least

suggest that this was a pseudoscience.

Here, too, however, no sharp distinctions will be possible. The activities being presented

as science will be more or less scientific in character, depending on their place on the

spectrum. We may decide that a systematic form of knowledge-seeking activity has suf-

ficient scientific features to be thought of as truly scientific or, that by virtue of lacking

such features it should be characterized as a pseudoscience. But there will be borderline

cases in which we are uncertain where to draw the line. The work of Barthes and his fellow

structuralists is a case in point. Was ‘‘semiology’’ even a proto-science? Could it ever have

become a science? I suspect not, but this is question on which reasonable people could

disagree.

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2.3 Expanding the Criteria

The present paper seeks to expand the range of criteria by which we locate our knowledge-

seeking activities. Existing criteria focus on the nature of scientific reasoning and the

structure of scientific theories. It is not that those existing criteria are mistaken. Far from it.

The degree to which a theory is falsifiable, for instance, will continue to be an important

criterion of the scientific. But there is a further criterion we need to take into account,

which has to do with the nature of scientific communities.

To some extent this is already recognized, for many complaints about the unfalsifiability

of theories are, in fact, complaints about the community that is defending them. ‘‘Creation

science’’ (for instance) is eminently falsifiable. We have excellent reason to believe that

God did not create the world in six days, roughly 6000 years ago. The problem with

creation science is not that it lacks lacks empirical content. It is that the community of

creation ‘‘scientists’’ refuses to accept the evidence that falsifies it. If their theory appears

unfalsifiable, it is because they have equipped it with defence mechanisms that ‘‘explain

away’’ the relevant evidence (Boudry and Braeckman 2011, 155).

It follows that one of the factors that can contribute to our judgements regarding science

and pseudoscience is that the theory in question has been endorsed by the right kind of

community. Such an endorsement is not merely of sociological interest. It also has epis-

temic significance: the procedures of scientific communities constitute a particular kind of

warrant. They constitute a particular form of mechanism that (more or less reliably) gives

rise to knowledge. Conversely, the fact that a theory continues to be defended as a science

while lacking this kind of warrant will be reason to suspect it is a pseudoscience.

3 The Social Character of Science

What I am advocating, in short, is a science as social process approach to the demarcation

problem. This rests on the insight that the modern sciences are successful not merely

because they employ particularly reliable forms of reasoning or trustworthy experimental

methods. The success of the sciences also depends on the existence of a particular kind of

community, with distinctive norms and procedures. These procedures are collective as well

as individual: the success of the sciences cannot be understood by positing an individual

thinker face to face with the world, however sophisticated her thinking and however

careful her experiments.

3.1 Science as Process

This idea is scarcely new. Almost 50 years ago the physicist John Ziman argued that

scientific research is a social activity. Technology, Art and Religion are perhaps

possible for Robinson Crusoe, but Law and Science are not. To understand the nature

of Science, we must look at the way in which scientists behave toward one another,

how they are organized and how information passes between them. (Ziman 1968, 10)

But while the idea is not new, it has become central to the work of a number of

contemporary philosophers. These include David Hull (1988), Helen Longino (1990),

Philip Kitcher (1993), and Miriam Solomon (1994, 2001). While they may disagree

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regarding the particular mechanisms involved and the manner in which they operate

(Solomon 2001, 54–55), they are all convinced that a particular kind of social organization

is essential to the success of science.

A helpful example is provided by David Hull’s book, Science as Process. Hull defends

two theses: a selectionist thesis and a social mechanism thesis. The selectionist thesis holds

that scientific progress involves the same kind of selection process that is responsible for

biological evolution (Hull 1988, 282, 287). In the case of science, however, this is a

process of conceptual rather than genetic selection (Hull 1988, 20, 23, 441). Ideas are

‘‘selected and passed on because they ‘fit’ the facts revealed by experiments and/or are

better adapted to the social and conceptual environment of the relevant scientific com-

munity’’ (Grantham 2000, 445–46). Hull’s second insight—his social mechanism thesis—

is that ‘‘the social structure of science is not ‘external’ to science. The reward structure of

science and the dynamics of cooperation and cooperation are the engines that drive con-

ceptual change’’ (Grantham 2000, 448). While these two theses are interrelated—the social

mechanisms he describes contribute to the process of selection (Boudry et al. 2015,

1179)—they can be discussed separately. It is the social mechanism thesis on which I wish

to focus here.

Hull’s social mechanism thesis highlights the collective processes that are responsible

for the success of science. The first is that of granting credit, particularly to those who can

claim priority in proposing an idea. A scientist gains credit not only by publication, but by

the number of times her publications are cited and used by others. Gaining credit for

priority might encourage secrecy, but in fact credit can be gained only by making public

one’s data and by citing the works of others (which in turn extends their credit). The

importance of gaining credit might also encourage fraud. But since scientific communities

are severe on those who offer fraudulent results, such fraud is comparatively rare.

The second mechanism is that of collective checking, a process by which others attempt

to replicate and verify published results. This results in a degree of objectivity. What is

important here is not merely that scientific theories can be inter-subjectively tested (Popper

2002, 22), but that they have survived a process of testing. The key feature, in other words,

is not the nature of the theory, but the character of the process. That process is a collective

one, which can compensate (at least in part) for the failings of individual scientists. As Hull

writes,

the objectivity that matters so much in science is not primarily a characteristic of

individual scientists, but of scientific communities. Scientists rarely refute their own

pet hypotheses, especially after they have appeared in print, but that is all right. Their

fellow scientists will be happy to expose these hypotheses to severe testing. (Hull

1988, 4)

Science, in other words, ‘‘does not require that scientists be unbiased’’; it requires only

‘‘that different scientists have different biases’’ (Hull 1988, 22).

3.2 The Role of Social Factors

One could certainly contest aspects of Hull’s presentation. Paul Griffiths, for instance,

while broadly sympathetic to his position, has offered a critical assessment of his argu-

ments (Griffiths 2000). But my citing of Hull’s work has been merely illustrative. My

assumption is merely that some such view can be defended: that the success of science is at

least partly a result of the norms and procedures of scientific communities, however one

spells these out.

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If that idea remains controversial, it may be because of a long-standing philosophical

prejudice. This recognizes the existence of social factors in the history of science, but

assumes that these must be either epistemically neutral or a source of error. Robert Nola

and Howard Sankey, for instance, have argued that the progress of science cannot be

explained by reference to the non-cognitive goals of scientists, that is to say, their personal,

professional and political interests (Nola and Sankey 2000, 7). But this is a mistake.

Scientists’ personal and professional interests can contribute to the cognitive goals of

science. What enables them to do so is a particular set of institutional procedures. Given

such procedures, a scientist’s pursuit of his own interests can advance the goals of science

(Hull 1988, 357).

This view of science should not be confused with a social constructivist conception, of

the kind offered by David Bloor (1976). I agree with Nola and Sankey in rejecting the

latter. Firstly, there is no anti-realism built into this account, no implication that science

does not, in fact, produce true beliefs about the world (Henson 1988, 192). Secondly, it

sees the progress of science as related to ‘‘internal’’ as well as ‘‘external’’ factors (Hull

1988, 387). The social processes that underlie scientific knowledge include, for example,

arguments about the available evidence and what it warrants. Thirdly, the view on which I

am relying does not deny that there exist reliable forms of reasoning or that the use of such

forms of reasoning is one of the features of science. It merely insists that the use of such

forms of reasoning is not sufficient to explain the success of the sciences. The sciences

have another feature, which is the kind of community to which they give rise and upon

which they rely. This feature is not merely of sociological interest. It is (or should be) of

interest to philosophers, since it is one of the factors that contributes to the growth of

knowledge.

4 A Social Process Criterion

I am assuming, then, that it is of the very nature of science to be a collective activity,

undertaken by a particular kind of community with distinctive norms and procedures. If it

is this is correct—if the activity of a curious Robinson Crusoe would not count as ‘‘sci-

ence’’—then we need to broaden our criteria of the pseudoscientific to take it into account.

A first step in this direction was taken in 1978 by Paul Thagard, with a definition of

pseudoscience that builds on the work of Imre Lakatos. ‘‘A theory or discipline which

purports to be scientific is pseudoscientific,’’ he writes, if and only if

(1) it has been less progressive than alternative theories over a long period of time,

and faces many unsolved problems; but (2) the community of practitioners makes

little attempt to develop the theory towards solutions of the problems, shows no

concern for attempts to evaluate the theory in relation to others, and is selective in

considering confirmations and disconfirmations. (Thagard 1978, 227–28)

Whatever one makes of this definition (Mahner 2007, 519), what is noteworthy about it is

that characteristic (2) is a characteristic not of a theory, but of the community that holds it.3

Similar suggestions have been made by Mario Bunge (1991, 246), Massimo Pigliucci

3 Thagard later modified this view (1988, 168), but continued to acknowledge that it is not enough to examine the characteristics of theories; we need to look at the behaviour of the community that employs them. Indeed he went further, to discuss the communal nature of science and what he called ‘‘group rationality’’ (1988, 187).

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(2013, 18), Martin Mahner (2007, 523, 525), and (most explicitly) Noretta Koertge (2013,

177). All of these authors have highlighted the social dimension of science and suggested

that this should play a role in determining what counts as pseudoscience. My aim here is to

develop this insight into an explicit criterion and to discuss its use and significance.

Here, then, is my proposal. One feature to be taken into account when deciding if a

theory is scientific is whether it forms part of a research tradition that is being actively

pursued by a scientific community. Conversely, a reason to regard a theory as pseudo-

scientific is that it purports to be scientific but has been refused admission to, or excluded

from, a research tradition of this kind. The latter is not, in itself, a decisive reason for

regarding a theory as pseudoscientific. It is what moral philosophers call a pro tanto

reason, which ‘‘has genuine weight, but… may be outweighed by other considerations’’

(Kagan 1989, 17).

4.1 Scientific Communities

‘‘This is all very well,’’ the reader may object, ‘‘but we are no further ahead. All you have

done is substitute one problem for another. It may be that one mark of a scientific theory is

that it forms part of a research tradition being actively pursued by a scientific community.

But how can we decide if a community is scientific? Even if we can do that, how can we

decide if a theory forms part of a research tradition within such a community?’’

These are good questions. Take, first of all, the identification of scientific communities.

The problem here is that just as there are theories that appear to be scientific but are not, so

there exist communities whose procedures merely imitate those of science. Any group can,

for instance, set up a journal and institute a process of peer review. But that process may

involve only insiders, ‘‘belief buddies,’’ as Koertge describes them. Such people are firmly

committed to the central doctrines of the group. While they ‘‘help collect supporting

evidence and arguments,’’ they are ‘‘very reluctant to encourage criticism’’ (Koertge 2013,

179).

We find this occurring in the aftermath to the publication of Velikovsky’s Worlds in

Collision (1950). While Velikovsky’s ideas were almost universally rejected by the sci-

entific community, his followers formed communities of their own, at least one of which,

the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies, still exists. They also set up journals, which were

peer-reviewed, although almost exclusively by fellow Velikovskians (Gordin 2012, 181).

A perhaps more influential example is provided by practitioners of homeopathy, who also

form a community with peer-reviewed journals, at least one of which (Homeopathy) is

published by a well known academic publisher (Elsevier).4 If we consider homeopathy a

pseudoscience, we shall need to ask what distinguishes this community of researchers from

a properly scientific one.

So yes, my proposal does create a new demarcation problem. But it is not identical with

the old one. As noted earlier, traditional demarcation criteria focused on features of sci-

entific theories or on forms of scientific reasoning. My demarcation criterion focuses on

epistemically-relevant features of intellectual communities. It is, however, relatively easy

to identify such features. We can do so by finding paradigmatic cases of scientific com-

munities (Laudan 1983, 117), such as the community of physicists or that of biologists, and

analysing their norms and procedures, to discover which of these contribute to the gaining

4 In 2015 Thomson Reuters removed this journal from its Journal Citation Reports because of its 71% self- citation rate (see https://archive.is/RFzYo), an indicator of pseudoscientific status that is consistent with what I am arguing here.

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of knowledge. These will include the procedures that Hull identified: those of granting

credit and collective checking. But they will also include distinctive norms: patterns of

behaviour seen as desirable or obligatory (Pettit 1990, 725).

The best known account of the norms of scientific communities is that offered by Robert

Merton. Merton’s first scientific norm is universalism: the fact that the ‘‘race, nationality,

religion, class, and personal qualities’’ of a scientist are treated as irrelevant in the

assessment of her scientific work (Merton 1973, 272). The second is what Merton calls

communism (or, if you prefer, ‘‘communality’’): the idea that the results of science are

considered to belong to all (Merton 1973, 273). The third norm is disinterestedness.

Individual scientists may be far from disinterested, Merton argues, but the procedures of

the community ensure that their partiality will not distort the science (Merton 1973, 276).

Merton’s last norm is perhaps the most important: it is what he calls organized scepticism

(Merton 1973, 277). Within a scientific community no ideas are exempt from critical

scrutiny.

More recently, Helen Longino has also set out four features of what she calls an

‘‘idealized epistemic community’’ (Longino 1994, 145), a category that includes, but is not

limited to, the scientific. Firstly, she writes, such a community will have ‘‘publicly rec-

ognized forums for the criticism of evidence, of methods, and of assumptions and rea-

soning’’ (Longino 1994, 144). Secondly, it is not enough that the community merely

‘‘tolerates dissent’’ (Longino 1994, 144); it must also show evidence that its theories

change over time in response to criticism. Thirdly, there must be ‘‘publicly recognized

standards by reference to which theories, hypotheses, and observational practices are

evaluated’’ (Longino 1994, 144), standards that are themselves open to criticism. Finally,

the community must be characterized by ‘‘equality of intellectual authority,’’ although this

does not exclude the recognition of differing degrees of expertise (Longino 1994, 144–45).

A community would count as scientific to the extent that its procedures embody these

ideals.

Critics of scientific communities point out that they often fail to live up to these

standards. Their processes of peer review are far from perfect (Smith 2006, 179–80), they

grant credit for discoveries unevenly (and often unjustly) (Merton 1968, 56–59), and the

priorities of those who fund research can hinder creative thinking (Braun 1998, 808). But a

practice can be normative for a community, even if its members occasionally fail to follow

it. Its normative status is revealed by the fact that failures are disapproved of and are seen

as needing correction. This is certainly the case for scientific communities. There is, for

instance, a body of scientific literature discussing how to improve the processes by which

experimental results are reviewed (Ralph 2016). It is true that not all communities of

inquiry will follow these norms and procedures equally. But this merely shows that there

are degrees to which particular communities will count as scientific, and, as I have already

argued, any criterion of the scientific will lead to ‘‘more or less’’ rather than categorical

judgements.

I have spoken of these features as characteristics of scientific communities, but they are

more widely applicable. While the discipline of history, for example, may or may not be

regarded as a science, one would expect the community of historians to embody these

characteristics. Once again, however, this merely reflects the fact that there is no sharp

distinction between the scientific and the non-scientific (Hoyningen-Huene 2013, 29). My

social process criterion does not require that these features be exclusive to scientific

communities. All it requires is that the sciences are among the activities whose success

relies on the existence of a particular kind of community. If a theory purports to be

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scientific but has been refused admission to, or excluded from, the research traditions of

such a community, we have a pro tanto reason to regard it as pseudoscientific.

4.2 Research Traditions

The second question my criterion raises has to do with research traditions. I have argued

that a theory counts as scientific when it forms part of a research tradition that is being

actively pursued by a particular scientific community. But what does this mean? More

importantly, how do we know when a theory has been refused admission to, or excluded

from, such a tradition?

The idea of a research tradition is notoriously vague. We can individuate research

traditions in a number of ways. We can do so, first of all, by reference to the kinds of

entities they invoke. On this view, corpuscularianism—the attempt to explain physical

phenomena by positing the existence and interaction of microscopic particles—would

count as an early modern research tradition. We can do so, secondly by reference to some

common pattern of explanation. Darwinism, for instance, can be seen a research tradition

whose identity arises from a particular pattern of explanation, invoking the power of

variation and selection. Finally, we can identify a research tradition by reference to the

kinds of questions it is attempting to answer. Civil engineering, for instance, can be thought

of as a research tradition that studies the physical principles underlying built structures.

Research traditions are pursued within scientific communities. But scientific commu-

nities are not co-extensive with research traditions, for a single community may include

more than one research tradition. With the physics community, for instance, string theory

may be thought of as a research tradition, which can be identified by the kind of entities it

posits. But it represents only one line of research on the problem of a quantum theory of

gravity.

What does it mean for a theory to be part of a research tradition? It is not enough that it

should be discussed within the current scientific literature. Homeopathy, for instance, is

occasionally discussed within mainstream medical journals. But the mere fact that it is

discussed (in order to be dismissed) does not make it scientific. Nor will it suffice that a

work advocating the view has been published in a journal published by such a community.

In 2004, for instance, a paper advocating intelligent design theory was published in a

journal associated with the Smithsonian Institution (Meyer 2004). But it was almost

immediately disowned by the scientific society in question. In any case, there are many

articles published in peer-reviewed journals that are effectively ignored by the community

of scientists.

It seems, then, that something more than mere discussion or publication is required. A

helpful way of identifying this ‘‘something more’’ is provided by Laudan’s work on the

idea of scientific progress. For Laudan, the aim of science is problem solving (Laudan

1977, 111). A research tradition embodies a way of solving a particular set of problems,

either empirical or conceptual (and can be judged by its success in doing so). If this is true,

then a theory will be part of a research tradition if it is playing an active role within this

problem-solving process.5

More precisely, a theory can be part of a research tradition in one of two ways. Firstly, it

can be currently under discussion as a proposed solution to a particular problem. It may, of

5 While the present paper uses Laudan’s terminology of research traditions, the argument could be recast by reference to what Lakatos (1970) called research programmes. The feature in question would then be that of having been refused admission to, or excluded from, the relevant research programme.

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course, be a controversial proposed solution. When David Raup and his colleagues put

forward the idea that there had been periodic mass extinctions during the history of life on

earth, this idea sparked vigorous debate, since it ran counter to a long-established tradition

of uniformitarian thinking in both geology and biology (Raup 1986, 29–34). Such debate

does not prevent a theory from being regarded as scientific; on the contrary, it could be

evidence of its scientific status. But a theory can also be part of a research tradition by

being taken for granted. Within any research tradition there will be well established

theories that form the background for further research. The tradition to which Raup and his

colleagues belonged included views regarding the history of life on earth to which both

they and their opponents could appeal in the course of their discussions. These views also

count as scientific, since they function as background beliefs against which new proposals

will be assessed.

My argument is that we will have a pro tanto reason to regard a theory as pseudosci-

entific when it has been either refused admission to, or excluded from, a scientific research

tradition that addresses the relevant problems. The ‘‘excluded from’’ is important, for there

are many theories that were once actively investigated by scientists, but which have now

dropped out of serious consideration. A paradigmatic instance is that of Ptolemaic

astronomy, which had ceased to be an active research tradition even before Galileo’s

discoveries (Margolis 1991, 261, 264). The theory of phlogiston—that of a substance

released from bodies by combustion—was abandoned as a result of the work of Antoine

Lavoisier (1743–94). Closer to our own time, the theory of a luminiferous aether was

abandoned by physicists, following the publication in 1905 of Einstein’s special theory of

relativity, which did not require such a medium.

It is more difficult to say when a theory has been refused admission to the relevant

research tradition. In order to meet this criterion, it must be the case that it has been given

some level of consideration. As I noted a moment ago, a theory can be discussed within the

scientific literature without being part of an active research tradition. Biologists may, for

instance, take time off from what they regard as their constructive scientific work in order

to refute the claims of creation science. They are, in a sense, taking it seriously, but they do

not regard it as a live option, in the sense of a solution to a current problem which they and

their colleagues could be persuaded to opt. So we can safely say that creationism has been

refused admission to the research traditions of contemporary science. If it persists in the

face of such rejection (as it does), this is a pro tanto reason to regard it as pseudoscientific.

4.3 A Temporally Indexed Criterion

An important implication of my argument is that the criterion I am discussing is not

timeless: it is relative to the state of science at the time the judgement is made. Judged by

this criterion, a theory can be properly scientific at one time but pseudoscientific at another.

The principle similia similibus curantur (similar are cured by similar), although coined by

Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843), was already used within Hippocratic medicine

(Schiefsky 2005, 57; Hippocrates 1959, 182 [21.10]). It is unclear that we can speak of

medical science at the time of Hippocrates, but the Hippocratic tradition is widely regarded

as at least proto-scientific. During the period when Hippocrates’s works dominated medical

practice, the similia similibus principle shared this status. But now that the principle has

been abandoned by the scientific community, its use by homeopathists is pro tanto evi-

dence that homeopathy is a pseudoscience.

Conversely, my social process criterion may lead to the judgement that a theory was

pseudoscientific at one time, but became scientific at a later date. It is tempting to argue

Identifying Pseudoscience: A Social Process Criterion 293

123

that this was the case for the theory of continental drift (plate tectonics) first put forward by

Alfred Wegener (1880–1930). From the 1920s through to the 1960s it was widely rejected

by North American geologists, who regarded it as simply false.6 In fact, however, it

continued to be actively discussed within the United Kingdom (Oreskes 1999, 124–27), a

fact that would count as evidence in favour of its scientific status, even then. So a better

example may be the germ theory of disease. While it is important to not read anachro-

nistically the work of premodern thinkers (Howard-Jones 1977, 62–63), something akin to

a germ theory of disease seems to be found in the work of Girolamo Fracastoro

(1478–1553). But it failed to become part of the mainstream medical tradition until the

work of Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–65) and Louis Pasteur (1822–95). If it had been put

forward as scientific by some early modern medical writers, the fact that it had not been

adopted by the scientific community would be pro tanto evidence of its pseudoscientific

status.

Does this fact that my criterion is time-indexed count against it? After all, it implies that

at some point in time a true theory (such as the germ theory of disease) may have been

pseudoscientific. This is, however, not as much of a scandal as it may appear, for our

judgements regarding other form of epistemic justification are similarly time-indexed. It is

a commonplace among philosophers that a true belief can lack justification. It is also

widely accepted that a theory that lacks justification at time t1 can receive justification at

time t2, when (for example) new evidence becomes available. In a similar way, a theory

could, at time t1, lack the status of science, while gaining this status at time t2, when it is

taken up by a scientific community.

The criterion I am proposed is time-indexed in another sense, insofar as it relies upon

the existence of scientific communities with more or less clearly defined research tradi-

tions. As my cautious reference to Hippocratic medicine suggested, such communities are

more evident in modern times. One can speak of a community of natural philosophers even

in the medieval universities (Koertge 2013, 170), although few of these restricted them-

selves to what we would call ‘‘science.’’ But scientific communities begin to take their

modern form only in the seventeenth century, with the founding of societies such as the

Accademia dei Lincei (1603), the Royal Society (1660), and the Académie Royale des

Sciences (1666). By the mid-eighteenth century, there existed a clear model of a ‘‘Republic

of Science,’’ whose members

investigated nature and reported their findings to each other, … arranged those

findings in a systematic manner and interpreted their meanings, … evaluated inter-

pretations proposed by others and defended their own conclusions. (Donovan 1996,

27)

Despite the fragmentation of today’s sciences, something of this model persists. It follows

that the kind of judgement I am urging is more easily made with regard to modern sciences

than with regard to the sciences of the ancient and medieval worlds.

While my social process criterion grants considerable authority to scientific commu-

nities, it does not regard them as infallible. Such communities can (at least for a time)

reject true theories—such as the germ theory of disease—and endorse false ones. They can

also accept true theories without due consideration of alternatives. It may, for instance,

have been advantageous if some chemists had persisted in defending the phlogiston theory

6 Even though the scientists who rejected the theory did not regard it as pseudoscientific, we may be able to do so, if there are those who continue to espouse it after its rejection by the relevant scientific community (see Sect. 4).

294 G. W. Dawes

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(Chang 2011, 421–23). In a similar way, the community of geologists should, perhaps,

have paid more attention to the ‘‘expansionist’’ theory, which held that the volume of the

earth had increased over time (Carey 1975; Solomon 1994, 338). The category of the

scientific is not co-extensive with that of the true or even with that of ideas worth pursuing.

What my view insists on is that theories that form part of active research traditions within

scientific communities enjoy a particular kind of epistemic warrant. That warrant is one of

the features that marks them off as scientific.

5 A Final Objection and Response

There exists a final objection to the view I am defending. When a particular scientific

community refuses to incorporate a theory into its ongoing research traditions, it will have

reasons for doing so. Take, for instance, Velikovsky’s theory regarding cosmic catastro-

phes. One reason this theory was rejected was that its view of electromagnetic forces would

require radical revisions to established laws of physics (Menzel 1952). It seemed more

likely that Velikovsky was wrong than that so much of our existing science needed to be

revised. If we want to know if a theory being defended as scientific is in fact pseudosci-

entific, should we not examine reasons of this kind? Should we not go beyond the fact of its

rejection to understand why it was rejected?

Not necessarily. First of all, there are two types of judgement a scientific community

can make. It can judge that a theory is simply bad science, for what I earlier called

evidential reasons. It can fail to account for all the available evidence, be unable to

accommodate new evidence, or demand radical revisions in what we already believe

without a compensating payoff in explanatory power. Alternatively, scientists may judge

that a theory suffers from various structural flaws which render it unworthy of serious

consideration (Lugg 1987, 225). It is the second kind of judgement—that a theory has

structural flaws—that is likely to lead scientists to reject it as pseudoscientific.

This judgement may, of course, be correct. So yes, we should indeed examine why

scientists have rejected a theory, for their reasons may lend support to a ‘‘pseudoscience’’

verdict. But while structural flaws may give us reason to regard a theory as pseudosci-

entific, they are not the only relevant consideration. Even if a theory has no structural

flaws—the theory of phlogiston, for instance, seemed respectable enough in this respect—

scientists may still reject it because it lacks evidential support or because a better theory

has been found. In these circumstances, scientists will not regard it the original theory as

pseudoscientific. They will regard it but simply as bad or superseded science.We, however,

may regard it as pseudoscientific if there are those who continue to present it as science

after such a rejection has occurred. It is pseudoscientific insofar as it lacks one of the

characteristics of science: that of having survived scrutiny by a properly scientific

community.

What this means is that my criterion is, in a sense, a quick and easy one. It does not

require us to know why scientists rejected a theory. It does not matter whether those

reasons are structural or evidential. The very fact that a theory continues to be presented as

science after having been rejected by the relevant scientific community is a pro tanto

reason to regard it as pseudoscientific. Is this a purely descriptive criterion? No, it is not. If

science is by nature a collective enterprise—if its success depends upon the existence of a

particular kind of community—this criterion also has epistemic significance. It means that

Identifying Pseudoscience: A Social Process Criterion 295

123

the theory in question lacks a particular kind of epistemic warrant, that which is conveyed

by the norms and procedures of a properly scientific community.

6 Conclusion

My proposal has been that a social process view of science highlights a feature that gives

us reason to regard a theory as pseudoscientific. We have pro tanto reason to regard a

theory as pseudoscientific if it purports to be scientific but has been refused admission to,

or excluded from, a research tradition being actively pursued by a scientific community. Is

this a useful criterion? I admit that it requires careful qualification. It constitutes neither a

necessary nor a sufficient condition for such a judgement. It is, at best, one criterion among

many. It also offers no more than a pro tanto reason: it could be outweighed by other

considerations. But it does allow us to shift the focus of the discussion from features of

scientific theories to features of the communities that employ them. While an investigation

of the features of scientific communities is scarcely a new field of inquiry, it is one to

which philosophers could profitably devote more attention.

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